An Examination of the Progressively Influential Role of Major Party Debates on American Presidential Elections: 1960-2008
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DO THE DEBATES MATTER? AN EXAMINATION OF THE PROGRESSIVELY INFLUENTIAL ROLE OF MAJOR PARTY DEBATES ON AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS: 1960-2008 INTRODUCTION There were fifty-six American presidential elections from 1788 to 2008.1 Only ten of the elections, however, included debates between the major party candidates. These occurred from 1960 to 2008, and there were none before that time.2 In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, who were nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively, participated in a series of four debates. Television first became a significant factor in presidential politics in 1960 and the appeal of the Kennedy-Nixon debates was that they would be televised.3 Television’s presence, however, overshadowed the even greater phenomenon that the Kennedy-Nixon debates were not only the first televised presidential debates, but they were also the first debates between major party candidates ever to take place.4 From that point until 2008, another twenty- two debates were held between the major party presidential candidates, one between the Republican and Independent nominees, and eight between their running mates.5 1 Irwin Unger, These United States, 2nd Ed., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1999, 2003, A18-A21. Unless otherwise noted, a “debate” as defined in this thesis refers to a major party presidential debate, one held between two or more candidates of opposing parties, where at least one of which belongs to a major party (i.e., Democrat or Republican). Not included are debates between intraparty candidates (such as, among Democrats during the primary season) or general elections held exclusively among non-major party candidates (such as debates among the Constitution Party’s, Green Party’s and Libertarian Party’s nominees), but they do include general election debates between major party vice presidential candidates. 2 No debates were held prior to 1960, and none were held in 1964, 1968, or 1972. 3 Sidney Kraus, Televised Presidential Debates and Public Policy, 2nd Ed., Mawhah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000, 10. 4 Newton N. Minow and Craig L. Lamay, Inside the Presidential Debates, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008, 1. Notably, 1860 presidential candidates Abraham Lincoln and Steven A. Douglas did not debate; their “Lincoln-Douglas” debates were in 1958, during their campaign for a United States Senate seat from Illinois. For more discussion about the Lincoln-Douglas debates, see James L. Huston and Robert W. Johannsen (Ed,), The Lincoln Douglas Debates of 1858: 150th Anniversary Edition, New York, NY: Oxford, 2008; and Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 5 Republican Ronald Reagan debated against Independent John Anderson in 1980; Jimmy Carter, the incumbent president and Democratic nominee, declined to participate. 5 This thesis asks the question “do the debates matter” and answers it with a resounding “yes.” It is important to note, however, what “matter” means in this context. Although there is ample evidence to link debate performances to election outcomes, the debates matter a great deal more than in their capacity as election determinants. They matter to the candidates, to the media and the pundits, and to the voters. Moreover, there were occasions when a particular candidate’s debate performance was assailed by observers and reflected in post-debate polls, followed by subsequent debate performances within the same season that reversed the candidate’s downward trajectory. Significantly, although some argue against the debates being election determinants, there is no contention within the scholarship, to date, that the debates do not matter in the broader definition of the word, as applied in this thesis. The 1960 debates served as an experiment that Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972 did not care to repeat.6 Johnson did not fare particularly well in televised appearances, and Nixon, haunted by his painful experience in the 1960 debates was reluctant to debate again, and so the debates did not resume until 1976, when Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford were eager to revive them.7 At first glance, the realization that the first debate did not take place until 172 years after the first presidential election might lead indicate that the debates are merely a trivial component of a campaign. On the contrary, as this thesis establishes, debates have, consistently since their inception, played a key role. Both Nixon and Kennedy attributed the 1960 election outcome to the debates, the latter emphasizing the power of 6 Alan Schroeder, Presidential Debates: Fifty Years of High-Risk TV, 2nd Ed., New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2008, 16. Schroeder wrote of Johnson’s lack of effectiveness as a speaker on television. 7 Schroeder, 16-17. 6 television, ceding that “I never would have had a prayer without that gadget.”8 Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his final year as president in 1960, understood that as well, questioning the wisdom of Nixon, who was the incumbent vice president at the time, for agreeing to debate, because debates are inherently disadvantageous to incumbents.9 Jimmy Carter attributed both his presidential election victories in 1976 and loss in 1980 to the debates.10 Ronald Reagan, who defeated Carter in 1980, was extremely thankful for the televised debates, as he understood their impact.11 The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henniger, who wrote about the debates that year, concluded that “the presidency of the United States essentially could be decided by a 90-minute show.”12 Reagan and his 1984 opponent, Walter Mondale, also conveyed how much the debates mattered: Reagan described how nervous he was after a subpar performance in the first debate, prompting speculation that at age seventy-three he was too old to be president.13 Mondale, in turn, described Reagan’s triumphant performance in the second debate as “the end of my campaign.”14 By 1988, a single question asked by moderator Bernard Shaw to Michael Dukakis about Dukakis’ wife hypothetically being raped and murdered, was deemed the “killer question” insofar as Dukakis’ lackluster response perpetuated his passionless image. His opponent, George H.W. Bush, won the election.15 In 1992, Bill Clinton deemed the 8 Schroeder, 137. 9 Boston Globe Staff, “Bay Stater Quotes Ike: Debates Don’t Help Nixon, Boston Globe, October 13, 1960, 1. 10 George Farah, No Debate, New York, NY: Seven Stories Press, 2004, 2. 11 Martin Schram, “After the Debate, the Pollsters Scramble,” Washington Post, October 30, 1980, A1. 12 Daniel Henninger, “The Great Debate and Electronic Democracy,” Wall Street Journal, October 30, 1980, 30. 13 Ronald Reagan, An American Life, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1990, 326. 14 Jim Lehrer, Tension City, New York, NY: Random House, 2011, 27-28. 15 Jack Germond, and Jules Witcover, Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars? The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency, 1988, New York, NY: Random House, 1989. The book’s first chapter, based on that question, is titled “A Killer Question” because, as the authors explained, it destroyed Dukakis because of how he handled it. If he answered it with more emotion, they wrote, he might have helped his image quite significantly. 7 debates so important that he insisted on a town hall format, in which audience members asked questions of the candidates directly, so that he could showcase his conversational prowess.16 Using a baseball analogy, the Boston Globe’s Robert Jordan wrote that Bush, who was the incumbent that year, needed a “miraculous last at-bat” in the final debate, thereby arguing that a masterful debate performance plausibly could salvage his campaign.17 Not wanting to take any chances with a poor debate performance, Clinton, the 1996 incumbent who had a comfortable lead, purposely negotiated one of his debates against Bob Dole to coincide with a baseball playoff game so that if Clinton made a gaffe, fewer people would be watching.18 The debates continued to matter in 2000 and 2004, which were the election years in which George W. Bush won very narrow victories, R.W. Apple of the New York Times described how in 2000 uncommitted voters were repelled by Gore’s bullying tactics in the debates and gravitated toward Bush.19 By that year, the debates had become so prominent that third-party candidate Ralph Nader sued the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which sponsored the debates, because he was excluded from them, as he believed they were his best chance to win the election.20 In 2004, the role of the debates continued to grow: they were deemed as having a transformational effect on presidential races, and a split-screen camera intensified the need for candidates to be 16 Lee Banville, Debating Our Destiny: Presidential Debate Moments That Shaped History, Arlington, VA: MacNeil-Lehrer Productions, 2012, 31. 17 Robert A. Jordan, “Bush Needs a Miraculous Last At-Bat,” Boston Globe, October 18, 1992, 77. 18 Schroeder, 34, 19 R.W. Apple, “Last Debate Clearly Left Some Voters Dissatisfied,” New York Times, October 19, 2000, 1. 20 Shelley Murphy, “Nader Sues over Debate Exclusion,” Boston Globe, October 18, 2000, 18; Will Lester, “Ralph Nader Settles Lawsuit,” Associated Press, April 17, 2002. The CPD settled the lawsuit with Nader on April 16, 2002, paying him $25,000 for attorneys’ fees and court costs. 8 continuously alert, telegenic, and not display any negative body language.21 Lastly, in 2008, the debates mattered, particularly beyond the ticket headliners. When